


therapy

by gothoria



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Hurt Spencer Reid, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Sad Spencer Reid, Therapy, angst with a so-so ending, but you all know what that means ;), we’re getting there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25552747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothoria/pseuds/gothoria
Summary: “how do you feel today, spencer?”it’s the question she asks every day. every day, he says the same thing.“i’m okay. i’m doing better.”his eyes say something different.“i’m losing my mind without emily here, and i’m taking dilaudid again. please help me.”
Relationships: Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Comments: 3
Kudos: 99





	therapy

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably not my best work but i wanted to write something and this flowed into me pretty well soooo

chrysanthemums.

emily always told spencer how there was a language to flowers. how a bouquet could mean so much more than just ‘get well.’ how it could mean, ‘have hope’, ‘you will get justice’, ‘you’re free.’ 

the bouquet of chrysanthemums he sets down on her grave every friday represent death. rebirth, she would say. not death. 

but it’s so hard to think of it that way. it’s so hard to do anything when he sees her in every dark-haired woman that passes him in the supermarket. he sees her face on wandering strangers, imagines her sitting across the courtyard of his therapist’s office. 

sometimes he’ll see her face on the lady sitting on the faraway park bench as he plays chess. well, he tries to. he tries to play chess, but he gets frustrated with himself as he counts move after move. he throws the pieces on the ground, ignoring the stares of pedestrians walking by him. 

he doesn’t like to look at them. he fears that they’ll look a little too much like her and that he will be so wrapped up in the fantasy that he will take a few steps toward them, reach out a hand to touch their shoulder, and call out emily’s name. they’ll look at him with confusion and he will be so embarrassed that he won’t be able to say a thing to them, not even a, “sorry i thought you were someone else..” 

it’s hard to see her death as her rebirth, especially when he refuses to accept her death. 

his therapist tells him to move on. he can’t. _he didn’t even get to say goodbye._

jj helps him, lets him crash on her couch more times than she should. sometimes, he thinks she’s holding something back. he can see it in the way her eyes go all over the place when he asks her if she said goodbye to her. like she’s making it up on the spot. 

he doesn’t bring it up. he doesn’t really want to know, anyway. it might kill him if he learns the truth, if he learns that jj got the opportunity and he didn’t make it on time to even have the _slightest_ chance. 

his therapist tells him to move on. he can’t. 

he just can’t. 

the air is cold, it lashes out at his face, messes his hair up even more than it already is. 

her grave is lonely. no one else has had the guts to come back. it’s been 10 weeks, and the team comes and goes when they have the chance, but they don’t make a schedule like reid does. he makes sure he comes by every friday. 

every single friday. if they’re on a case, he will ask his neighbor, simon, if he can leave the chrysanthemums there on her grave, tells him he has a spare key underneath the rug, tells simon to ignore the needles and vials on the kitchen counter. _he can handle it._

simon looks at him with pity the first time he asks him to ignore his addiction. he tells spencer that he’ll leave the chrysanthemums on emily’s grave, and that he is sorry for his loss. 

there’s something he’s not saying with his words, simon is saying it with the tone of his voice. ‘ _i’m sorry for your loss, i can’t ignore this, get help.’_

when spencer can’t find his vials after he gets home, he knows simon has gotten rid of them. he also knows where to get more. he debates it for a minute, and debates it no longer. 

he goes out the next night, praying that he won’t see any of the team. the bar alley is so dim that it’s hard to make out the face of the man giving spencer five glass vials. it’s better that way. it really is. 

he doesn’t debate getting more when he runs out. he doesn’t debate much anymore. hardly puts up a fight when derek teases him, or ruffles his hair. he used to. he used to, but it’s so absurd to fight anything when emily isn’t here to prove him wrong. 

she was the only one who teased him in a way that let him know she just wanted him to feel normal. she wanted him to feel like a person, not an asset. 

it’s hard to feel normal, to feel alive, when all you do is help give a geographical profile. spencer has been reduced to his brain, and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like he’s existing, not living. 

he briefly wonders if this is how people feel when they lose a friend. he’s read enough studies on grief to recognize what he’s going through. 

emily wasn’t a friend. she was family. that’s why it hurts _so_ much. it hurts to know that, eventually, henry will forget all about aunt emily. he will forget how her voice sounded, how she could comfort a kid with just a hug. 

they’ll forget about her. even he will, after so many years. 

he wishes she would come back. he places daffodils on her grave. they symbolize a new beginning. 

rebirth. 

he wishes she would come back. 

-

and then she does. she comes back, but he is so angry at jj that he doesn’t get the chance to relish in the moment. instead, he lashes out, he closes himself off. 

it’s for a good reason. he sees his therapist again, asks her why jj would do such a thing when he was in so much pain. why she would chalk his emotions up to an ego thing. 

_profiling skills? god, what a narcissistic thing. it’s not about that, it’s about the fact that he never got to say goodbye and it consumed him for 10 weeks. for 10 weeks, he didn’t know how to be anything but a machine._

it’s hard not to roll his eyes at everything they say, hard not to make connections in their words, hard not to blurt out things like, “ _so are tears.”_ when jj says that charm can be quite the killer. 

he’s mad at her. 

he calls her jennifer for the first time in years. he doesn’t know her, not anymore. he thought jj was his friend. 

apparently, she’s a better liar than he thought. 

he got what he wanted though. emily is back. he can’t look at her for more than thirty seconds yet. he thinks she’s the beginning to the end for his mind, will try to track her movement and convince himself that he’s not going crazy. she’s really here. 

she’s really here, and he is so glad. but he’s also confused. what does he do with all this grief now? now that there’s no one _to_ grieve.

what does he do with the sterile needles hiding in the cabinet above his sink? he quit a few weeks ago. the pain was going nowhere. plus, he knew what emily would say if she knew what he had been doing. 

_“this isn’t you, spencer. you’re not the guy to hide away his feelings from me.”_

then again, she was dead. so, when he quit, he stashed some extra. just in case. 

he admits this to his therapist. not explicitly. he mentions how he craves something to get rid of the pain and she looks at him like she _knows._

she doesn’t say a thing. something about a HIPAA violation. he thanks her for it. she gives him a slight smile, and that’s that. it’s awkward, and scary, how easily one can look past a drug addiction. 

his therapist tells him to clean his room. it’s a metaphor. 

she knows how he’s been struggling, has seen the mandatory journal entries every monday. still, he never thought his diagnosis would be depression. he thought he was overreacting, or maybe reacting exactly how anyone would if a loved one died. 

no one ever told him how easy someone could slip into the bottomless pit in their mind. he’s always been afraid of his mind, and now he’s getting a taste of the whirlpool that lives inside. 

he is wandering around, looking for someone to point him in the right direction. he is so confused. should he be happy emily is back, or angry that hotch and jj couldn’t be bothered to let them know? to let them know she was actually alive, in paris, playing online fucking scrabble with jj. 

he debates it, but it’s silly. he should stick to happy, let this joy stick. 

it’s rare that someone comes back from the dead. 

he plants the daffodils on her grave because he wants new beginnings and he has the chance to take those new beginnings. 

it’s lonely in his apartment. the lights are off, he can hardly stand to look at the mess his bedroom is in anyway. his kitchen table has letters piled up on them, letters from people who knew emily. hotch sent them over to him, told him, 

“ _you look like you need them.”_

he thanks hotch, gives his boss a forced smile. hotch can see right through it, he knows that. he’s not trying to fool hotch, he’s trying to fool himself, and he sinks further into the pit. 

emily is back, and she has thrown him a rope. he just needs to suck it up and take it. 

it’s lonely in his apartment, but it doesn’t have to be. he can invite emily over for chinese takeout and red wine that she insists is the holy grail. he can invite jj, and henry, and will, to the park. he can take his godson out to the museum to see he new dinosaur exhibit. 

he hasn’t seen henry in so long and the thought alone almost makes him cry. 

it doesn’t have to be so lonely. _**he**_ doesn’t have to be so lonely. 

therapy taught him a lot of things. it didn’t teach him how to move on. he needs to learn that for himself. 

when he tells everyone that he’s sorry he’s late, later that night at rossi’s house (mansion), he means it. 

he’s sorry he’s late, but please give him some time. he’s trying to learn how to move on, one step at a time. 


End file.
